


If Forever Comes

by mandy_croyance



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 17:56:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2741714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandy_croyance/pseuds/mandy_croyance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer doesn’t watch as Ryan brings himself off. He turns his head and closes his eyes and tries to remember how to inhale. And exhale. And how exactly this happened, how he let it happen. He tries to remember if he wanted this, and maybe it’s the lack of oxygen but his mind is blank, an expanse of white not unlike the empty walls of this room.</p>
<p>He must have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Forever Comes

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 2007-05-23 at http://mandy-croyance.livejournal.com/6392.html.
> 
> Please note this story is written in a non-linear style.

  
  
_If forever comes_   
_And the angels find us here_   
_With soft words yet unsung,_   
_May they wash away the fear._   


  
**\--- | 1 | ---**   


  
This room, it has four walls, two windows, and trillions of air particles that zip across space and time and collide at unfathomable speeds. There are two chairs (the recliner in the corner and a swivel chair by the desk), one bed, twenty press-on glow-in-the-dark stars, and forty-seven books stacked haphazardly into a five-shelf bookcase.

It is the room he’s called his own since pre-school, although the circus-print bedspread and the clown-covered wallpaper no longer remain to tell the stories of his childhood. This room is where he built his bed-sheet forts and searched for buried treasure in the closet. This was his playground and his hideaway, his respite from the taunts of elementary-school bullies and snubs of high-school cliques. (The Blink 182 posters never called him fat and the closet full of khaki shorts and band t-shirts never told him he wouldn't make it.) Here – that chair – is where he sat trying to pick his jaw up off the ground for a good twenty minutes after Ryan called him two years ago, positively atwitter, swearing that he’d just spoken to Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy and Pete wanted to come down to Vegas to watch them play and _maybe sign their band_! This room, it’s memory upon memory laid end to end and stacked ceiling to floor, and each square inch is more precious than the last.

But now…

“Spencer, do you need another box?” His mother stands in the doorway holding out a glass of lemonade with one hand and clutching a tuft of newspaper in the other.

“Where are you guys moving again?” Spencer asks, wiping his brow and reaching for the drink with a smile. The tall glass of lemonade is wonderfully cool against his fingers and even cooler on his tongue. The weather has been ridiculous lately, an unusual heat wave for April.

His mother’s face fogs over as she moves inside the room, running her hand along the surface of his now empty desk and her eyes across the unfamiliar expanses of bare wall. “A condo not far from the downtown core,” she says distantly, like she’s already somewhere else. “Your father wants to be closer to his work. And I… I’ve always thought I’d like to live within walking distance of those quaint little boutique shops and the theatres. And now that your sister’s going off to university…” She trails off and turns to him with a tight smile. “You’ll have to come visit when you’re done recording. Promise, Spencer.”

“Of course, Mom,” he says easily, warmly. “You know I will.”

And at that, her face, it just glows. Her smile is full of pearls, row on row. His mother has always had a beautiful smile: big, bright and warm. And now these tiny little lines frame her eyes whenever she hikes up her cheeks and it’s absolutely adorable. He’ll say and do anything to make her smile like that; Spencer simply cannot resist. His mother, she’s the leading lady in his life and sometimes he wonders if there’s really room for anyone else anymore. His mother, his father, his sister, his band – his heart is so packed, so clamorously full of people, that the love is already threatening to burst forth from his chest.

His mother, though, she kisses him sweetly on the cheek and heads for the door. “Oh, speaking of which, I almost forgot,” she says right before crossing the threshold. “Ryan called. He’s coming by later. Insists on helping with the move.”

“He’s that bored already?”

“Oh, hush, Spencer,” she chides, and suddenly he’s fourteen again. “I don’t see why you must always think the worst of people.”

“I’m not! Mom, I didn’t mean it like—”

“It’s not a good habit and it’s not how I raised you.”

Spencer blows out a breath and resists the urge to rolls his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

“And hurry up. Lunch is in ten.”

“Yes, Mom.”

She nods, and closes the door behind her.

 

  
**\--- | 9 | ---**   


  
Buried deep inside, flesh against flesh, there’s a feeling that breaks over Spencer like a cresting wave. A feeling of calm rather than frenzy. A warm haze that surrounds him, tempts him into letting down roots in this strange world he and Ryan have built for themselves in the dimming evening light – this topsy-turvy parallel universe that is straining against their fingers, trying to slip from their tenuous grasp with every clock-tic that brings them closer to nightfall.

This moment that feels like it might just steal away with the sun.

Then Ryan looks down at him with those dizzying eyes and Spencer quickly forgets whatever he was thinking, is quickly deprived of the ability to think at all.

Ryan licks his lips and presses forward. He rocks in Spencer’s lap and Spencer can only groan from the pleasure that flows between them and pools in Spencer's belly. His fingers quickly find their way to Ryan’s sculpted hips, dig in, pull Ryan down harder, deeper. Ryan, he sets the pace, moving expertly, twisting and panting and arching in ways that should be illegal, that the rest of the world should never, ever see – that particular crease of his forehead, that particular bowing of his back, that look in his eyes that says this is just for Spencer. His.

Ryan, who’s normally so beautiful but graceless (arms too thin, legs too long), is strangely elegant in his passion. Full red lips hanging open. Caramel-coloured hair dripping into his eyes like the perspiration that is slowly forming along the ridge of his brow. Spencer glides his hands up Ryan’s sides, along the slopes of his shoulders to the back of his neck and tugs him down for a kiss. When their mouths meet it’s all heat, fire on their tongues scorching their mouths as Ryan grinds harder.

He’s close.

“This,” Ryan mumbles as he breaks away. It takes a second for Spencer to even comprehend it as a word. “This,” he says again, the vowel and consonants mixing with his heavy, stuttering breaths. “Like this. Just like this.”

Spencer meets his stare with searching eyes, suddenly timid. Ryan’s pupils are dilated in this lust that flows so strongly between them, but the look in his brown eyes is still solid and fierce. The shaking hands on Spencer’s chest hoist Ryan upward and he dangles for a moment before dropping himself skillfully back down.

“This,” Ryan repeats a little more firmly, as firmly as he can while grinding them together. “I want you like-- like this. Us. Just like this.”

There’s a sudden clenching in Spencer’s stomach that deprives him of the ability to speak as the words ring in his ears. It pushes against his lungs, forcing the air into his throat where it gets stuck somewhere around his Adam’s apple and Spencer, he can’t speak, can’t breathe, can’t think. He’s lightheaded but through his slatted eyes he can see Ryan pull off of his slackened prick, come dripping down the insides of Ryan's legs, and wrap a hand around his own hard-on.

Spencer doesn’t watch as Ryan brings himself off. He turns his head and closes his eyes and tries to remember how to inhale. And exhale. And how exactly this happened, how he let it happen. He tries to remember if he wanted this, and maybe it’s the lack of oxygen but his mind is blank, an expanse of white not unlike the empty walls of this room.

He must have.

Then he feels the slide of a hand around his chest and Ryan’s body presses flush against his side. “I love you,” Ryan whispers against the shell of his ear and Spencer tries not to panic. Instead, he nods and Ryan sighs happily, threading their fingers together. “Come, we’ve got to get up,” he says. “Dinner’s probably ready.”

And they do.

 

  
**\--- | 2 | ---**   


  
While clearing out the junk under his bed, Spencer finds a veritable treasure trove of mementos he hadn’t remembered were there.

His first baseball mitt, the one his father bought him for this sixth birthday, lies beside the collection of rookie cards that had been his pride and joy until the age of twelve (when he got his first drum set, Spencer thinks wryly). He and Ryan used to pour over those cards all the time – daily almost – trying to figure out whose collection was better and arguing over who had the rarer, more valuable cards. Every Friday for almost two years, they would go down to this comic book shop in the mall to buy new packets and stare in awe at the faces of Babe Ruth and Willy Mayes tucked away behind glass display cases and price tags that boggled their ten year-old minds.

Later, in a dusty cardboard box, he finds a whole host of old art projects from grade school – drawings so awful they make him cringe and laugh and feel slightly nostalgic for the days when simple things like macaroni and sprinkles seemed to hold so much promise and all the critics (i.e., Mom and Dad) thought everything he did was “simply wonderful, honey”. In truth, visual arts was always one of his worst subjects. He never did have much in the way of artistic vision – especially not concerning aesthetics, which has always been more Ryan’s domain – but what Spencer lacked in talent he made up in enthusiasm. His elementary school teachers always knew which picture was his by the sheer amount of glitter, glue or crayon wax on the page. But Spencer had just been a regular kid then with regular kid logic; less wasn’t more – that didn’t make sense. How could less be more? More was more, and more was good, so Spencer had always done more. It had only made sense.

(Sometimes he thinks it still makes sense.)

Shoved toward the back, there are all manners of toys: tennis balls, action figures, some Jenga pieces which have been MIA since circa 1998. At least half of this shit is Ryan’s, Spencer’s sure, so it’s a good thing he’s coming over because there’s no way in hell he’s boxing it all up himself and carting it all the way to a cabin the middle of fucking nowhere. (Ryan still refuses to give him a spare set of keys to his Vegas apartment – which is actually kind of offensive when you think about it because as if Spencer would ever steal anything or hold a ruckus party in Ryan’s house. Not giving a key to Brendon, he understands; Brendon’s not the world’s most responsible person and has the foresight of a particularly dimwitted gnat. But that isn’t Spencer and Ryan knows it, so what’s the big deal?)

However, it’s not until Spencer gets to the old, yellowing photo album that he starts to realize exactly how intertwined he and Ryan’s childhoods truly were.

 

  
**\--- | 8 | ---**   


  
Ryan greedily slides his hands down Spencer’s bare chest. He leaves a trail of goose bumps in his wake and every hair standing on end. Spencer shivers – the room is cold – and then it occurs to him that he’s a lot more naked than he realized, than he ever consented to be. In fact, he’s not so sure he gave his consent to any of this, but that obviously doesn’t matter now.

Ryan is looking at him again with those wide eyes and Spencer’s a second away from moving to cover himself when Ryan’s hands go for his own belt buckle and the pinstripe pants he was wearing fall away toward the floor. In a moment his vest, crisp white shirt and boxer-briefs lie crumpled on the ground and Ryan’s standing in front of him completely naked save for the faint blush which highlights his cheeks.

He’s beautiful, naked and unguarded like this, but Spencer already knew that. It’s not like he hasn’t caught glimpses of Ryan in the buff – how could he not with the way they’ve been living in such close quarters for the past two years and sharing a dressing room every night on tour? This is different, though. This isn’t Ryan stepping out of the shower or Ryan changing his sweaty underwear after a show; this isn’t a sideways glace at a mirror reflection with a feigned look of disinterest pasted on his face. This is Ryan’s naked body willingly bared for Spencer to see. Drink in.

Touch.

And as his eyes rake over Ryan’s too thin form, the butterflies begin to beat their wings faster against the lining of Spencer’s stomach.

There’s an almost electrical charge that passes from Ryan’s body into his when Ryan lays a hand on Spencer’s thigh. It’s a jolt that brings Spencer’s limbs to life – like Frankenstein’s monster – as he reaches out for Ryan in lust, in curiosity, and takes a hold of the boy’s narrow hips to tug him closer. Spencer, he has no idea what he’s doing and yet somehow he’s switched over to auto pilot. As if this were natural. As if his body were programmed for it. He’s got Ryan on his back with his legs spread wide before he even realizes what he’s doing, and his fingers are already ghosting down over Ryan’s entrance.

“Lotion,” Ryan says, a reminder, and reaches over toward the night stand where Spencer’s always kept a tube of hand cream (for dry days and lonely nights). Then the cream is on his fingers, and his fingers are in Ryan. _God_ , Spencer finds himself thinking. Is this what Ryan wanted all along? To be touched like this? The way his body can’t stay still on the sheets suggests it. The way soft moans leak from the corners of his mouth and his fingers curl into the bed linens suggests it too.

Suddenly, Ryan is pushing against his chest and then it’s Spencer on his back with one of Ryan’s legs kneeling on either side. Ryan’s wearing a wry smile before he presses their lips together again. In one fluid motion, he grabs hold of Spencer and lowers himself down.

Ryan’s body, it’s like a vice – if vices were soft and warm and fit perfectly against your skin.

Ryan’s body, it drives the last thought from Spencer’s skull.

 

  
**\--- | 3 | ---**   


  
“Your mom told me to just come up.”

Spencer’s back tenses and his head snaps from the album in his lap to the rakishly thin boy shifting on the balls of his feet in the doorway. “I didn’t even hear the doorbell,” he says closing the book and waving Ryan into the room.

“Yeah,” Ryan says distractedly, his eyes circling the bare space, trying to take in the sheer emptiness of it all, make sense of his former second home. “Your folks were outside in the garage. They saw me pull up.”

Spencer nods and runs his fingers through his hair. He fights back a snort as Ryan absentmindedly smoothes his hands over his wrinkle-less vest. Ryan’s overdressed, as usual, and looks immaculate for just having driven hundreds of miles in a couple of hours. He was supposed to be at the cabin this week – _is_ supposed to be at the cabin this week – but Ryan’s never been very good at being alone.

Spencer knew Ryan was talking out of his ass when he said he was going to spend a couple weeks by himself in the wilderness to get some ‘real writing’ done before the rest of them got there. Ryan didn’t work well in empty houses and emptier neighbourhoods. Ryan thrived in white noise, did his best work to the low hum of a television in the background and the soft snores of three other bodies piled high on the couch atop one another and video game controllers.

Ryan Ross hadn’t written on the road, not because he couldn’t but because he didn’t want to. Because Ryan’s writing is not as fictional as he would like to believe, and every poetic verse his mind had strung together while they were on tour had been about sleazy journalists or heart-broken acrobats. Poor Ryan hadn’t run away to the foothills of Nevada to look for inspiration but to escape the inspiration he already had.

The thing is – and this is the thing Spencer knows Ryan failed to realize when he’d come up with this ingenious plan – it isn’t babbling brooks and scurrying chipmunks that inspire Ryan Ross. It’s people that inspire Ryan Ross, and he was going to be miserable so long as he was away from them.

Ryan yawns and flops down on the bed – on what’s left of the bed, at least. On the tiny corner of space that’s not covered in books and boxes and GI Joes and old Jenga pieces, but Ryan’s small enough that he fits. He’s smaller than Spencer remembers actually.

“Geez, do you even cook at the cabin?” Spencer teases, can’t help but blurt out. “I mean, there’s a stove and everything, Ryan. Use it.”

Ryan glowers and crosses his twig-like arms. “I cook,” he spits. “I mean, it’s mostly warming up the meals Brendon’s mom froze for me, okay, but that’s still using the fucking stove. I mean, what the fuck, Spencer?”

“Mom’s not going to let you leave here without making you eat a full meal.”

“Good. She said she was making pot roast.”

“Really?” And Spencer grins. He doesn’t even care how fucking hot it is outside, his mother’s pot roast is the best. God, he hasn’t had it in… well, way too long anyhow.

Ryan grins too.

 

  
**\--- | 7 | ---**   


  
He’s lost. Spencer, he’s so lost in this kiss that he almost wishes they’d send search parties after him. Because God only knows how he’s going to find his way home after this. Forget that they’re lying on his childhood bed; he’s so far from everything he’s ever known that it’s all just a smear of colour along the horizon now. And so. He’s clinging onto Ryan like a lifeline because in all of this Ryan is the only thing that’s familiar. Maybe not quite like this, no, but Ryan’s been here since the beginning and Ryan will be here in the end; Spencer wouldn’t – couldn’t have it any other way.

Then Ryan breaks the kiss and is shimming down the bed until his face rests inches from Spencer’s bare hip.

“Ryan, what—” Spencer tries to ask, but is cut off as Ryan’s thin lips slip around him. Spencer’s entire body goes rigid as Ryan lowers his head, taking in as much as he can and wrapping his hand around the rest. His mouth is everything Spencer had ever imagined it to be, if Spencer allows himself to admit that he’d imagined this before. Ryan knows how to hollow his cheeks and bob his head and flick his wrist so that Spencer feels like he’s going explode after just the first few minutes. He doesn’t, of course; he thinks of dull things like his 12th grade politics class and waiting in line at the DMV and regains his composure. He summons all his restraint. But when Ryan runs his tongue along the underside and pulls back to suck on the tip like a kid with a lolly pop, Spencer stops fighting the compulsion to open his eyes – has to open his eyes and look – and instantly he’s pushing on Ryan’s shoulder to stop himself from coming hard down the back of his throat.

“What?” Ryan asks, panting heavily, his cheeks flushed pink. Spencer shakes his head and lies back on the bed, wide-eyed and disbelieving. He’d just… They’d…

“I’d swallow, you know,” Ryan says, hauling himself up the bed to where Spencer is. “For you, I would.”

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

Spencer sucks in a breath as he meets Ryan’s gorgeous brown eyes. “You looked…” he starts before he realizes that he probably can’t even begin to describe how Ryan looked. How intense the gaze he met was and how it instantly made him lose himself. “I can’t believe you did that.”

Ryan smiles. “What, you thought I only wrote a good pop song? I’m not a one-trick pony, Spencer Smith.”

“No, no. It’s just…” Ryan silences him with a kiss.

“You don’t have to say it. You don’t have to say anything. There’ll be time for talking after,” he says, running his hand up under Spencer’s shirt and pulling it over his head.

And all Spencer can think is how he barely has a voice _now_.

 

  
**\--- | 4 | ---**   


  
“So what can I do?” Ryan asks, shoving his hands in his pockets and peering around the empty and yet cluttered room. Everything Spencer owns is scattered all over the floor or spread out on the bed.

“Just grab something and stuff it somewhere,” Spencer replies, picking up his baseball mitt and tossing it unceremoniously into a box with a bunch of other nick-nacks (mostly souvenirs people had bought him from wherever which he figured he really should keep, but probably somewhere more appropriate – like the attic). It’s that time of the afternoon where lunch seems too long ago and dinner isn’t soon enough and Spencer has pretty much lost his patience with this packing bullshit.

Ryan laughs. “You’re never going to be able to find anything if you do it that way.”

“Oh the fuck well.”

Ryan laughs again and stoops over to pick up some old Christmas and birthday cards that Spencer has somehow managed to drop all over the ground. “What are you getting Brendon for his birthday?” he asks as he begins to form a neat little stack to his left. “I was looking online yesterday to see if I couldn’t find some of those ridiculous shoes he likes so much, but I have no fucking idea what kind he’d want. I mean, he’ll wear glow-in-the-dark runners that look like they were made for a fucking elephant, but he always hates whatever I’ve got on my feet.”

Spencer shrugs from the closet where he’s pulling out bags of old clothing that he hasn’t seen in years and hasn’t fit into in even longer. “I can’t believe my mom kept all this shit,” he laughs. Part of him kind of wants to go through it all, take some time to remember where he was when he last wore that jacket and why on Earth he bought that pair of pants, but that part has been summarily overruled by the rest of him which is wilting in the heat and staged a coup about an hour ago. He throws the bag toward a pile meant for the Salvation Army but it lands about two feet short. And, shit, he’s really starting to hate this.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Ryan,” he says, getting up and savagely kicking the bag in the right direction. “You might try some signature Nikes, but you’d probably have to get them off eBay.”

“Fuck. No, they’ll cost even more of a fortune that way and Brendon will _still_ hate them. I’m just going to ask his mom.”

Spencer looks over at Ryan and grins. “Yeah, man. Totally.”

They work in amicable silence for a few more minutes before Spencer clears his throat. “You know, I could, uh, find you something if you wanted.”

“Yeah?” Ryan looks up with a grateful smile on his face. “I wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble, Spence.”

“No, it’s cool. It could maybe, you know, be from both of us, yeah?”

Ryan nods. “Yeah. Sure. We could do that.”

 

  
**\--- | 6 | ---**   


  
Ryan’s lips, they’re like sandpaper against his skin; their dry, fine grain is strangely unfamiliar as they grate down his neck, dig into the hollow of his throat and scrape across his collar bone. They leave his skin red and chaffed in their wake. In fact, his entire body is flushed, his blood pulled toward the surface as though magnetized.

Spencer suddenly needs to see Ryan’s eyes, to look through them like he’s always done. Ryan – his Ryan, when did he become a carpenter of men? Where did he learn how to peel off a man’s bark, sand away his imperfections, and expose the unblemished layers below? He runs his hands through those toffee strands of hair, cups Ryan’s head and lifts it up, and his stomach positively collides with the floor as Ryan meets his eyes. He’s smiling this smile that pushes all of Spencer’s organs aside to make room for his new – new _thing_ that’s hatched within his chest. This thing that gurgles and pulses and bubbles and might just feel a little bit like hope.

Ryan reaches out a hand. “Close your eyes, Spence,” he says as his fingers glide over Spencer’s eyelids. “It’ll be easier if you close your eyes.”

The questions now burn on every inch of Spencer’s skin. What? What will be easier? What is it that they’re doing anyhow? It scares Spencer when Ryan tells people that he understands him best; he doesn’t understand Ryan at all. He can finish his sentences, has memorized the patterns in Ryan’s thoughts, preferences, and behavior (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 …), but that doesn’t mean he understands.

However, this… This is entirely new. This isn’t anything they can ignore come tomorrow. There are no precedents, nothing to compare it to, and no line of best fit. He can’t see a pattern in these erratic points – none he recognizes at least – and he doesn’t trust his speculation, extrapolation. This sort of thing is well out of his depth.

Then Spencer feels a timid hand brush against the sliver of skin between his shirt and the rise of his jeans – long, calloused fingers that graze the surface so lightly it makes his insides contract, sends shivers rippling under his skin in all directions. His belt is being unhooked, pulled from the belt loops. His fly is being lowered. The elastic of his briefs clings futilely to his skin as it’s drawn down around his thighs.

Spencer takes an impossibly deep breath through his nostrils. He bites his lips. He wants to sit up and tell Ryan to stop, tell him that, no, this is too much. He’s not ready for this. He’s too exposed like this. Spencer’s always been horrible about this part of sex (which is what he figures this must be now, maybe. Maybe something like sex). He’s not really comfortable with his body, not comfortable with being naked, half-naked, bare in any way around the people whose opinions he cares about most. And he’s certainly not comfortable with the knowledge that he and Ryan are about to cross this bridge that’s only passable in one direction; no going back.

Yet now there is a set of fingers wrapping around him, teasing in the ghostliness of their grasp and the slow, gentle way they pull upward along his length. And _Wait. Wait,_ he still wants to say, but he cannot open his eyes, let alone his lips, and so Spencer can only cast his furtive pleas heavenward, a prayer of jumbled thoughts and heavy breathing.

But Ryan’s noticed something, must have. His voice is as dry as his lips, though it tries to be placating. “You can imagine someone else if you want,” he says quietly. “It’s okay.”

And, God, Spencer very nearly opens his eyes at that, very nearly throws his lids open wide in utter shock. (Except that Ryan’s told him to keep them closed and he will because he’s not ready and thinks he might bolt; might run out of this room like there’s a fire chasing him, tripping over the pants around his ankles and spilling into the hall; might just kill himself on the stairs.)

“No,” he whispers. The word has to be torn out of his throat with a violent shake of the head, ripped from his larynx by force, but it’s there and it’s real. True. Because there’s no way he could’ve let Ryan believe…

Not for a moment.

Ryan smiles. Or rather, Spencer hopes he smiles because, really, he still can’t see anything except the dark orange glow underneath his own eyelids. It feels like Ryan’s smiling, though, and that’s good enough. Better than, because then Ryan bends down, overlaps Spencer’s lips with his own and kisses him slow and deep. He kisses him in a way that tangles Spencer’s fingers in Ryan’s hair, that makes time slip away entirely unnoticed. Such is the contrast between Ryan’s smooth, pink tongue and those sand-paper lips that Spencer doesn’t know if he’s coming or going, or even where he's been; it’s all blended into one inky swirl. Maybe he’s just everywhere now. Here is there, up is down, and Ryan Ross has his tongue in Spencer Smith’s mouth. Obviously the impossible has become possible now.

And he’s rather certain he’s falling up.

 

  
**\--- | 5 | ---**   


  
Ryan flips one of the baseball cards over a few times, examining it as the two of them are supposed to be moving the stuff Spencer’s dragged out from his closest into large, brown, cardboard boxes. “You know this one was mine,” he says, bringing it a little closer to his nose.

“Yeah? Let’s see?” Spencer leans over and plucks the card from Ryan’s fingers.

It’s Sammy Sosa in his white Texas Rangers uniform, foot dug into the plate and a fierce look on his youthful face as he readies his bat. “Nah. That one’s mine, Ryan. You traded it to me.”

“No, it’s not. I gave it to you because I was _going_ to trade it to you for your Alex Rodriguez, but you kept forgetting to bring it to school so I ended up getting it from David Granger instead. I guess you never gave it back.”

Spencer raises an eyebrow at him. “You remember all that?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, and for a second it almost sounds like he’s going to leave it at that but, “I remember more than you think,” he tacks on quietly and promptly turns his head to look away.

Then the room is too quiet. Not the buzzing of the old metal fan or the shouts from the kids playing in the street below (or maybe even a nuclear bomb exploding an inch from his ear) could have stopped Spencer from hearing each and every one of those syllables and now it feels like they could hear a pin dropping in China. The air is suddenly too muggy, or maybe it’s the cold fingers of guilt wrapped around Spencer’s throat that are making it hard to breathe.

“Ryan…” he says wincing, but there isn’t anything he could say right now to make it alright, even if all the words he knew hadn’t deserted him, so he doesn’t even try.

Ryan pulls Sosa from Spencer’s fingers and slides him back into the box, replaces the lid. “You know,” he says, his voice small and far away like his eyes, “this is the second time.”

“I know.”

“The first time I thought I could…” Ryan shakes his head. “I mean, either you do or you don’t, Spencer. Accidents happen but—”

“ _I know_ , Ryan.”

“Well, no, obviously you don’t.”

“Ryan!” Spencer snaps. God, he’d thought (hoped) that they were past this (would ignore it until kingdom come). Things had almost gone back to the way they were. Ryan hadn’t brought it up, and Spencer was never going to bring it up, and he doesn’t know why Ryan decided two seconds ago that he suddenly wanted to talk about it but Spencer, he doesn’t. He really doesn’t. He just wants it go away. “Just leave it, okay? Leave it.”

“No.” Ryan looks at him stonily and Spencer just knows he’s not going to get his wish today. “I’m not… Fuck you, Spencer. No. No, I’m not going to ‘just leave it’.”

A moment passes where Spencer looks at the floor and Ryan just waits. It’s almost the opposite of a staring contest, except Ryan’s eyes are boring holes into the side of his neck and Spencer’s already dying from the silence. They’re both stubborn, and if he wants to admit it to himself (he doesn’t), maybe that’s part of the problem.

“Look,” Spencer sighs, defeated, “that first time we were kids. I was… We were kids. And, I mean, it was just a kiss. It doesn’t have to mean anything.” And it was. It was just a kiss. Kisses were not a big deal to most people. Kisses were given out like candy; to total strangers; on first dates; at booths at the carnival; as a dare. And this one, it was just a stupid impulse Spencer failed to suppress in a moment of temporary insanity and now he truly wishes he could just take it back, just go back in time and stop himself from ever doing it – both times. Because, as much as they’ve tried to ignore it and carry on like nothing’s changed, it’s been like an infestation of termites under the floorboards: slowly eating away at their foundation. This friendship, the walls are sagging and it’s about to cave in, and that’s the scariest fucking thought Spencer’s ever had.

Ryan gets up and tucks the baseball cards into a box beside Spencer’s grade-school workbooks. “Fuck you,” he mutters dispassionately, stroking his hand over the box as though it’s the one in need of comfort. “It meant – It means something to me, okay? You can’t just go around kissing me. I don’t care if you’re fourteen or fucking ninety-five, Spencer; it’s not fair.”

Spencer nods along because this isn’t anything he hasn’t told himself twenty times before. He knows he’s not being fair to Ryan. Ryan who has been nothing but understanding, and uncharacteristically patient. Ryan who—Ryan who he’s pretty sure has been in love with him since the sixth grade.

Ryan’s words are carefully chosen. Maybe Spencer can see his hand shaking, but maybe that’s just his imagination. “If you’re straight, you’re straight, Spencer,” he says with a metered voice, “but please stop fucking with me.”

“God, I wasn’t – I’m not fucking with you, Ryan. I don’t…” Spencer blows out his breath and searches for the right words. He’s not good with words, and especially bad with feelings. And he hasn’t rehearsed his lines like Ryan has, like he was auditioning for Spielberg or Scorsese. “I don’t know, Ryan. I just don’t… How do I know?”

Ryan glances over his shoulder at him tiredly and shrugs. “There’s no hard and fast rule, Spencer. I don’t have, like, a handbook on homosexuality for you or anything. You just know. You see a boy and you realize that you’d much rather share yourself with him – your heart, your bed, your… A kiss. And then, you know.”

Spencer’s back is a little hunched and he’s sitting on his hands making his elbows bend back in an odd way, but he nods like it’s all okay. He pretends for Ryan like maybe he gets it when he doesn’t at all. Or maybe he gets it too well – it’s too glaringly obvious – and he just can’t cope. He’d rather retreat into his ignorance and block it from memory. Not think about it. Not think at all, if he can manage. But now Ryan’s not letting him and this is too much, far too much already. He’s paralyzed with fear and regret and a healthy dose of self-disgust. It’s just… Spencer, he’s not ready to move forward but he doesn’t know how to go back either.

And one look at him makes Ryan feel a little pity curl around his heart, a touch of guilt knock against his stomach. “You know I love you, right?” he whispers, sitting down next to Spencer on the bed and tugging out one of Spencer’s hands in order to lace their fingers. “Even if you’re not. I’ll be okay if you’re not. You’re my best friend, Spencer.”

Spencer nods again and somehow finds to courage to meet Ryan’s warm chocolate eyes. For a moment all they do is stare, but then Ryan’s thumb glides over Spencer’s cheek and Spencer subconsciously licks his lips in anticipation.

This time, Ryan kisses _him_.

 

  
**\--- | 10 | ---**   


  
After that...

After they pull their clothes back on;

After they go downstairs and sit around the kitchen table to eat the last meal Spencer will ever have in this house, and Spencer’s parents greet Ryan like a second son;

After Ryan kicks Spencer under the table just to catch his eye and make a face because Spencer’s dad has been going on forever telling yet another jargon-filled water-cooler story none of them really want to hear but no one has the heart to stop him when his hands fly like that;

After Spencer gets a stern, reproachful glare from his mother because Ryan had _kicked_ him and he couldn’t _not_ retaliate, because that had totally meant it was on, bitch;

After Spencer walks Ryan to the door and Ryan hesitates for just a moment before kissing him quickly on the lips and telling him he’ll see him next week at the cabin with the others;

After all of that, when Spencer’s lying on his newly clean sheets and staring at the four walls, two windows, and trillions of invisible air particles;

When he hears his Sidekick buzz, flips it open and sees a message about some 'awesome' new band Ryan likes;

When it's dark and quiet and he doesn't let himself over-think things too much, Spencer smiles. Because maybe… Yeah, maybe Spencer does want this. God, he’s so fucking frightened but maybe he wanted this all along.

He must have.

 

  
**\--- | fin | ---**

_And should our never last_  
 _Like the ageless sun and moon,_  
 _May they wrap me in your kiss_  
 _And may it be too soon._  
  


__

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in response to the slashatthedisco's [april contest](http://community.livejournal.com/slashatthedisco/1688918.html) and with some assistance from [this](http://community.livejournal.com/we_are_cities/24862.html) lovely prompt over at we_are_cities


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